The Constitution: Have we got it backwards? (Part 1 of 2)

This series is written by a private citizen with an abiding interest in U.S. history and particularly its founding documents: the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.

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To a man, the Founding Fathers spoke of a “limited government.” They enthused over the idea that the government they were creating would be “bound down by the Constitution” to only a relatively few assignments or responsibilities. Everything else was to be left to the states or to the people to manage.

In the document they created, Art. I, Sec. 8 listed 17 specific areas of activity and in the 18th gave the government to power to enact laws to fulfill those 17 responsibilities. That was it!

Even though Alexander Hamilton tried mightily to present a more centralized and powerful structure, the wisdom of the majority was for a government restricted to those specifics mentioned. It was expected that the structure they were creating of three, equally responsible branches: executive, legislative and judicial, could maintain the balance and each would guard its own area of activity to prevent encroachments by either of the other two.

From the ratification of the Constitution until about 1913, the original concept remained in place and was more or less adhered to by each succeeding administration. There were attempts, however, by individuals such as Teddy Roosevelt to expand the powers of the federal government and particularly the executive branch.

While there were certainly problems that the growing nation encountered along the way, the course remained pretty much as the Founders had intended. Such excursions as the creation of a national bank didn’t last and Andrew Jackson put the finishing touch to the second attempt by vetoing the legislation that would have kept the bank operating. To paraphrase President Jackson’s veto message, he could find nothing in the Constitution that authorized the federal government to be in the banking business. He apparently understood that the authority to coin money and establish the value thereof did not extend to the creation of a national bank.

It appears that the year 1913 was the year of departure. That was that year that the United States crossed the line from a federal government with limited powers to a centralized government with unknown powers, limited more by the imagination of the congressional and executive politicians and the judicial decrees than any founding document.

The three acts that made this change of direction were the Federal Reserve Act, the Income Tax (XVIth Amendment) and the direct election of Senators (XVIIth Amendment). A reading of the original document does not indicate support for any of the three.

In fact, the Federal Reserve is nothing more than a private bank chartered by the U.S. government and provided with unrestrained power to manipulate the currency of the country. The income tax had been considered unconstitutional and thus required an Amendment in order to be installed and enforced. The direct election of Senators deprived the states of their only representation in Congress since the senators were no longer beholden to the state but solely to the people of the state at large, the same as the representatives were.

From these three beginnings we seem to have had politicians, legislators, presidents and judges who have allowed their imaginations to roam far afield.

In Part 2 we will review some examples of the more egregious usurpations of power and the branch of government responsible. Your view is important.